Six Thoughts on Chess's Cheating Scandal

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past week, a cheating scandal has thrown the chess world into uproar. In round 3 of the Sinquefield Cup, Hans Niemann defeated Magnus Carlsen with the Black pieces. It was a big upset as Carlsen rarely loses in classical chess, especially with White against a much lower rated player.

The following day Carlsen announced via Tweet that he was withdrawing from the tournament, offering no explanation beyond a link to a video of soccer manager Jose Mourinho saying, “If I speak I am in big trouble.” This was widely interpreted as Carlsen implying that Niemann had cheated in the previous day’s game.

Crystal Fuller, Saint Louis Chess Club

Suspicions intensified when the Sinquefield Cup organizers added additional security measures the following day, including a 15 minute delay on the broadcast. Additionally, Chess.com quietly removed Niemann’s account. American grandmaster Hikaru Namakura added fuel to the fire when he suggested that Niemann had previously been banned from Chess.com for cheating.

On Tuesday Niemann hit back in a postgame interview where he addressed the suspicions head-on. He admitted to having cheated in online games, but never in tournaments with prize money, or over-the-board tournaments.

The latest development is that on Thursday Chess.com released a statement saying they have information that suggests Niemann’s online cheating was more extensive than he let on in his interview. They didn’t provide any details about this information (their policy is not to share details about cheating investigations) or any insight as to why Niemann’s account was allowed to remain active until now.

Whew. I think that brings us up to the present. With that background, here are six thoughts on the current situation:

1. Dropping out of a tournament is a big deal. I haven’t personally checked Carlsen’s entire tournament history, but other sources have said he’s never dropped out in the middle of a tournament before. In particular, in a round-robin where all play all, the pairings are set in advance, so one player dropping out really messes up the whole tournament. It’s a step you shouldn’t take except in extraordinary circumstances.
   
   Expressing himself with a link to a sports video is very much in Carlsen’s style on Twitter and usually it’s a lot of fun. But for something as serious as a cheating allegation, he really should have been more forthright and professional. Meanwhile, the lack of concrete information has fueled speculation. It’s well past time for him to issue a statement clarifying where he stands.

2. Previous to this incident, Play Magnus had made Niemann a brand ambassador and invited him to important events. And of course more recently the bombshell dropped that Chess.com had reached an agreement to acquire Play Magnus. So Niemann (sort of) works (worked?) for Carlsen and Carlsen (sort of) works for Chess.com.
   
   When you put all of this together with Chess.com’s recent statement indicating that Niemann’s online cheating is more extensive than he acknowledged, it paints a picture of some very tangled webs of allegiance behind the scenes. It’s impossible to say exactly how this is informing events, but it’s certainly part of the story.

3. This incident has surfaced a lot of unresolved issues with cheating in the chess world, and what strikes me is there is no clear consensus on the prevalence or seriousness of cheating in online chess.
   
   How big of a deal is it to cheat in online games that don’t count for anything? Personally, I thought it was a pretty big deal. I hope it goes without saying that I don’t cheat in my online games, but I’m also careful to avoid any appearance of cheating. In the course of my normal day – analyzing games, preparing material for students, etc. – I often have ChessBase open, but when I play online I try to make sure I have no chess apps running anywhere on my computer. I don’t know if the sites can scan for that, but I don’t ever want there to be any whiff of suspicion that it’s even possible I was cheating. But I’ve seen statements from others that cheating online is akin to jaywalking.
   

4. I had assumed online cheating was rare among titled players. The risk-reward just doesn’t make sense. When you cheat you don’t learn anything or get any meaningful practice and the rating points you gain don’t count for anything. But if you get caught it could have serious implications for your career, as we’re seeing with Niemann. Again, I’ve seen many statements from those in the know that many titled players have been caught cheating online in meaningless games.
   
   Leaders from both Lichess and Chess.com have said that the perception of cheating is a bigger problem than actual cheating, which they say is rare. They also say they have sophisticated anti-cheating systems in place. I like both sites and I play on both all the time, but if there’s one thing I learned from my tech experience outside of chess, it’s that statements to the effect of, “We have an ultra-sophisticated AI system that works great but we can’t tell you how it works,” should be regarded with the utmost skepticism.
   
   Perhaps more to the point, I’m not sure if it’s possible for anyone to know for sure if someone is cheating online. I’m not a cheating expert, but I’m a pretty strong player and I’ve devoted some thought to addressing cheating in chess. I just don’t have a lot of confidence that I can identify someone who’s cheating based on their moves. There are some very obvious cases, but it would also be possible to cheat in more subtle ways that would be very hard to detect.

5. There is a legitimate reason for Chess.com and Lichess not to share the specifics of their anti-cheating systems: it would help cheaters get around it. But there are also good reasons to be transparent. When it comes to an anti-cheating system, it’s important that it works, but just as important that it’s perceived to work. Everyone needs to feel confident that the game is being played on the level.
   
   Chess.com’s statement seems to say that they knew Niemann had been cheating all along, but that begs the question of why he was allowed to continue to play. The timing makes it seem like their decisions are as much about PR as about the integrity of the game.
   
   They’re walking a delicate balance between secrecy and transparency. Now that this scandal is in the spotlight, they may have to walk the balance back towards transparency to restore public confidence.

6. Okay, so cheating online might be more prevalent than some of us thought. How do you address this as an online player? Mostly, you just don’t think about it. The point is that suspicion of cheating can be more damaging than the cheating itself and if you give in to it, it will ruin your whole experience of playing online.
   
   If you believe your opponent is using computer assistance, you have to assume they’ve already foreseen everything you can possibly do, and there’s nothing you can do. This then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy even if they’re not actually cheating, because you play passively and pessimistically.
   
   When I was playing poker, I was often asked if I worried that people were cheating against me. My answer was that some might be, but that was already baked into my current win rates, and I could tolerate it at some level. I feel roughly the same way about chess. Actually, in chess the situation is better, because one dirty poker player could in theory empty out your whole account, but in chess a cheater can’t affect your games against other players if you don’t let them.
   
   So I assume some of my online opponents are probably cheating, but I try not to worry about it too much. In those games, I’ll just have to play even better to have a chance. If nothing else, it’s yet another reason not to take your online ratings too seriously, which is probably a good idea anyway.